A pit of oil waste left over from Texaco oil operations . Residents say the chemicals make them ill.

Chevron faces claims of up to $27 billion over pollution from oil drilling in the Amazon. Above, fishermen in contaminated waters.

By SIMON ROMERO and CLIFFORD KRAUSS
SHUSHUFINDI, Ecuador


MENTION THE GIANT oil company Chevron to Anita Ruiz, and she trembles with rage. At her wooden hut here in the Amazon forest, where oil-project flares illuminate the night sky, she points to a portrait of her youngest son, who died seven years ago of leukemia at age 16.

“We believe the American oilmen created the pollution that killed my son,”said Ms.Ruiz, 58, who lives in a clearing where Texaco, the American oil company that Chevron acquired in 2001, once poured oil waste into pits used decades ago for drilling wells.

Texaco’s oil crews are long gone, but black gunk from the pits seeps to the topsoil here and in dozens of other spots in Ecuador’s northeastern jungle. These days the only Chevron employees who visit the former oil fields, in a region where resentment against the company runs high, do so escorted by guards.

They represent one side in a bitter fight that is developing into the world’s largest environmental lawsuit, with $27 billion in potential damages. Chevron is preparing for a ruling by a judge in a tiny courtroom in Lago Agrio.

The sympathies of the judge, Juan Nunez, are not hard to discern. He appears likely to rule against Chevron this year.“This is a fight between a Goliath and people who cannot even pay their bills,”Mr.Nunez, 57, said in an interview.

But his ruling is not likely to end the case. Already, the dispute is the subject of intense lobbying in Washington, which could apply pressure to Ecuador on Chevron’s behalf. If the company loses, it is ready to pursue appeals in Ecuador and, if necessary, to seek international arbitration.

Texaco arrived here in the 1960s and began producing oil in the early 1970s, when Ecuador was still under military rule. Political tension surrounded Texaco’s presence in Ecuador much of the time it operated here in a partnership with the government, and by the time it was prepared to leave, in the early 1990s, a cleanup of its operations was needed.

So Texaco reached a $40 million agreement with Ecuador to clean a portion of the well sites and waste pits, absolving it of future liability. But that cleanup was far from the resolution Texaco had hoped to achieve.

Instead, villagers in Ecuador became convinced they were getting sick from the pollution left behind. They filed suit in 1993 in the United States. The lawsuit was eventually thrown out, on grounds the case should not be tried in the United States, and the plaintiffs filed it here.

Today, Chevron has absorbed Texaco, and Ecuador has gone through a metamorphosis under the leftist President Rafael Correa. He has sided with the plaintiffs, calling Chevron’s Ecuadorean past“a crime against humanity.”

Nearly every detail in the case is disputed, save one: Chevron and the plaintiffs agree that the expansion of oil exploration in northeastern Ecuador spoiled what had once been a pristine jungle.

More than four decades later, evidence of the contamination is unavoidable at well sites near Lago Agrio and other towns in the region. Some pools of waste dug by Texaco still lie exposed under the sun, seeping into nearby water systems. Other pits, ostensibly cleaned up by Texaco after the company handed over operations to the national oil company, Petroecuador, have pollutants near the surface.

Chevron argues that it cannot be held responsible for damage done by Petroecuador after it took over the site. The plaintiffs claim Chevron must be held responsible for damage where Texaco operated, up to the present. They argue that the systems put in place by Texaco allowed Petroecuador to go on polluting.

If Chevron has a problem with that, said Steven Donziger, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, then it should sue Petroecuador.

Chevron has fought back with lawyers and lobbyists, using highly paid advocates like the former United States trade representative Mickey Kantor to push the Obama administration to strip Ecuador of trade preferences, on the grounds that it broke its agreement to absolve the oil company of liability.

“I can’t warrant what Texaco did 42 years ago or 40 years ago or 35 years ago,”Mr.Kantor said.“All I know is they spent $40 million to clean it up. They were given a release signed by the government of Ecuador and Petroecuador.”